Low Carb & Keto Butter Chicken 🍛

Suuuper Creamy (& Easy!)

Butter chicken might just be the most famous curry export from India, wow-ing palates wherever it goes. Plus, it also happens to be incredibly easy to get just right.

And while there are a myriad of versions out there, it’s in essence a yogurt-with-spices-and-lime marinated chicken, cooked up in a mildly-spiced and incredible curry sauce. And for a paleo version, coconut yoghurt and cream work wonderful with the flavors!

Said curry sauce is also a breeze to make. Think sautéed onions cooked up with the incredibly aromatic ginger, garam masala, cumin, turmeric and just a hint of cinnamon. All naturally keto ingredients, whoop whop!

The Method 🔍

For exceptional butter chicken, browning each ingredient before adding on the next is paramount. You see this over and over again in cuisines worldwide: from Mexican mole, to American chili, Italian ragù, or French bourguignon.

The one thing all these stellar dishes have in common? Browning each ingredient fully before you add in the next one. The complexity of flavors that you get by doing this, simply cannot be replicated any other way.

So repeat after us: browning is truly essential.

The good news? This keto butter chicken ain’t mole or chili! i.e. you won’t need to leave it cooking all day. Think an hour tops, but more like 45 mins or so.

Serving Suggestions

If keto or low carb, we cannot recommend enough to serve it up with cauliflower rice. It’s wonderful this way, trust us. Just keep in mind that we prefer to rice our cauliflower slightly bigger here, so you get more of a ‘mouthful’ and it doesn’t completely blend into the butter chicken.

Having said that, we also always make sure to make a batch of our keto naan here. Which, for the time being, is simply our grain-free keto tortillas buttered up with garlic-infused ghee. p.s. we got the idea from a reader in fact (thank you Marisa if you’re reading!).

p.s. 2 we’re working on a ‘truer’ keto naan version, so we’ll be sure to let you know once that’s ready!

To serve:

Instructions

Mix in a bowl yogurt, lemon juice, garam masala, turmeric, cumin, and season with salt to taste. Stir in chicken pieces. If possible, cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours (or up to a day).

Melt butter with oil in a large pan over medium heat until bubbly. Add in onion and cook, stirring often, until translucent. Add in garlic, ginger, cumin seeds and cinnamon. Continue to cook until onions are browned, stirring frequently.

Add in tomatoes, chili and season with salt. Cook until the tomatoes are fully cooked and the chili soft, about 10 minutes.

Add in the chicken with the yogurt marinade into the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Pour in stock and bring the mixture to a boil, lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes.*

Stir in cream and almond flour and continue to simmer for 10-15 minutes until chicken is fully cooked. Season to taste.

Serve right away over a bed of cauliflower rice and garnished with cilantro leaves.

Recipe Notes

*Feel free to use bone-in (skinless!) chicken, you'll just have to cook it a little longer in the sauce (think around 30-45 minutes).

Please note that nutrition values for this dish may vary widely depending on the brands and amount of fresh produce you use (think onions and tomatoes).

107 comments

I just started keto about two weeks ago. I’m getting tired of fish, rotisserie chicken, salad and vegetables for dinner. I saw this recipe so I thought I’d give it a try! I had no idea what Butter chicken was, but this recipe is really yummy. It is like a curry chicken. I chopped up some cauliflower and just pop it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and serve it with the chicken. It was excellent! Thank you for the recipe!

I have made this several times now and everybody raves about it! Silly question, about how many cups is one serving? I am trying to stick to the portion sizes, but struggling without having a measurement!

My husband and I aren’t doing keto, but we still love this recipe. I used the whole can of tomatoes, several jalapenos, and cut out the chicken stock entirely so the sauce stayed nice and thick. A fabulous recipe–thank you!

I made this this evening, it was so good, my God. Really tasty, and that naan bread, delicious. I brushed mine with some melted garlic and herb butter after cooking. Really lovely meal. My daughter’s loved it and went back for seconds.

Wow this recipe is a winner! So flavorful and my house smelled absolutely amazing! Only changes I made were instead of cumin seeds I just used 1tsp of ground cumin and I added a little less broth(probably 1/4 cup)cause I wanted it thicker. Also I found 1/2 cup of cream to be just the right amount. Thank you for this great recipe!!

I made the butter chicken tonight and my family and I loved it. I wanted to make sure that I had the nutrition facts correct. Do they include the bread and the cauliflower rice or just the chicken itself?

This dish is absolutely wonderful. My family all enjoyed it and have asked for it to be put on a regular rotation on the menu.

I omitted the garam masala (food intolerances), and bumped up the cinnamon and cumin a bit. It was wonderfully fragrant and the taste was fantastic. This ‘cool’ butter chicken is going to be a regular thing. I’ll also a veggie version too.

OMG…My wife made this Butter Chicken for us and it was soooo good. Thank you for all you do to try to make this life changing journey possible for all of us… I’ve lost 38 pounds now in a little over 3 months…I have a ways to go, but I know I can do this….Thanks to all these wonderful recipes… I was a carb addict and these recipe creations make it all possible for me to forget that life….

Hi! Getting ready to try this… I’m always stumped by cauliflower rice. What do you do to prepare it? Throw it in a pan with a little oil and give it a quick sauté so it’s warm? Place it direct on the plate and let the entree warm it? Microwave it and all it good? Never sure!

Just have to end the week on a good note…this was incredible! I was thinking there’s might be a little more heat but overall it wasn’t disappointing! Did a quick sauté on the cauliflower rice as you suggested and the whole meal was great! Will most definitely be making this again!

Absolutely delicious butter chicken, but I for the life of me cannot figure out how you got the nutritional facts!

Made it, ate it, loveddd it. But once I start logging the ingredients I was more then double the listed carbs. And it seems to be from the spices I looked up the same spices across multiple brands and they all came up with basically the same numbers. Not sure how that worked out on your end but left me with no carbs for the day.

Awesome to hear Brandon! This is a recipe where numbers are all over the place (I get calculations that do less and others much more), having said that I hope that you understand that I am unable to spend time checking the ingredients with individual readers 🙁 xo!

Proper butter chicken doesn’t involve jalapenos. Ever. Green finger chillies, yes, but not jalapenos!! And where is the cardamom, the fenugreek or the kashmiri chilli powder? Sorry – this is a poor reflection of a wonderfully fragrant dish, amazing when cooked with the right ingredients (and the missing ingredients aren’t left out because they’re carb-heavy, as they’re not).

You obviously know how to make butter chicken so why are you looking up recipes on a blog ? I think the true measure of a chef is creativity … and Paola is a chef in her soul. She has taken a classic and made it into a dish that is easy enough for even a novice to make will still retaining ample flavor. I am sure if you search you can find more “authentic” recipes to copy precisely. I hope you do, because the more traditional preparation is also very labor intensive. It will give you something more productive to do with your time than criticize someone who works hard and shares straight from the heart. I will be starting my own food blog and I tend to take classic recipes as a guideline then get creative and use my flavor sense ( and 35yrs experience) to work with whatever ingredients I have on hand. Again I think people with a gift for cooking instinctively understand how to balance flavors. But hey, when I get my blog up you are welcome to come over and judge me too because I definitely color outside the lines ! The thing is… most people look up recipes because they are learning and a very complex recipe is intimidating. That’s why I am here. Keto and gluten free was not the way I ever cooked before. So I am here to learn because I admit that I don’t know everything. A little humility and gratitude goes a long way.

At the top of the recipe it’s described as a spices and lime marinated chicken, but the recipe calls for lemon. Guess it doesn’t really matter, but the flavors are different.

This sounds wonderful and as soon as I use up the leftovers in my refrigerator I’m making it. One dish I have is kheema … an Indian spiced ground lamb dish (keto, of course), also yummy with cauliflower. I don’t rice mine either, just chunk it up to get a better bite.

Hi, I love butter chicken! Thank you! I also wanted to recommend Kite Hill Almond Yogurt for those of us who don’t do dairy in the U.S. I get it usually at Whole Foods or Kroger. http://www.kite-hill.com/ They make regular and greek, I use it also as a sour cream substitute. A close second is Forager Project Cashewgurt, also Whole Foods or Kroger. i like the Kite Hill better and it has fewer carbs.https://www.foragerproject.com/cashewgurt/ Enjoy!

Hi ! I really want to try this recipe out but I wanted to know what type of yogurt brand you use? Most of the ones that I find say it’s got 9+ grams of carbohydrates but I’m your nutritional fact it’s only 4 grams. Can you help? Thanks

Hi Anna! I’m in Mexico City right now, so the brand I use is a local organic. BUT, full fat Greek style yogurts are mostly good. Also keep in mind that the yogurt you use for the recipe (which is not too much), will be divided between all the servings xo!

Amazingly good! Family devours this – and I make double batch’s of it. I add on more onion per batch and you can easily spice it up more as you taste/try it. We also used the Cauliflower rice and the kids actually like that better. I make my own in a cast iron pan with very little salt and pepper.

Yum! Thank you so much for this great recipe! I used to get this wonderful butter chicken at a restaurant near us that since closed, and have tried many other recipes that just weren’t right. I’m on a keto diet and loved this, but even better, my non-keto eating family all liked it, too! Finding keto recipes that I can serve to my husband and kids without making two versions is so nice!

I was really skeptical when I began making this since I’ve never made butter chicken before, but WOW this was delicious. I kept letting the smells of all the spices fool me into thinking I would be disappointed but I wasn’t. It also made way more food than I was expecting!

Hi Paola, I just wanted to confirm how much of the can of tomatoes is required. When I look at the metric measurements it’s 1/2 a 14 ounce can. When I switch to US cups it says 14 ounce can. Could you let me know which is correct please? Btw I have tried a few of your recipes and all have been amazing. Can’t wait to try more. Especially the cinnamon toast crunch!

Thanks for responding but that still doesn’t answer my question. I know it makes 6 servings but how big are those servings? 1 cup? 1.5 cups? I’m trying to start measuring servings out for myself and it’s hard to make a big batch and eye-ball one-sixth of a pot. Plus, it’s so delicious I could easily end up eating twice as much as I should… Thanks for any help.

I fully understood your question, but the thing here is that in a recipe like this it’s ironically much more precise to eye ball it (unless you weigh the whole batch yourself and then divide it by 6). Reason being that servings by volume and weight will depend A LOT on how much you boil down your butter chicken, how much stock/water you add etc.

While I might get say 8 cups, other people might get 7-9 cups with the same ingredients. Does that make sense?

Paola, I so appreciate this recipe. Regarding serving size. I’m afraid I am still a little confused. I understand there are 6 servings in your recipe. However, I’m unclear on the grand total of grams of the dish that are then being divided into 6.

I’ve double the recipe and am using left overs through the week. I’m eating 200 grams of the dish at one sitting. Can you help me understand how to calculate that out?

Thanks for all of these lovely dishes. We are new to the Keto Diet but are great lovers of food and your site is a welcome resource. -Brooke

Hi Brooke! If I give you guys grams or cups for this recipe they’ll be useless as all your batches will have a different yield depending on how you cook it (how much it reduces etc). I hope this makes sense! Its actually more accurate to eyeball it and divide it in 6. Unless you do your own weighing etc of each individual ingredient 😉

This was just fabulous! Found you on Pinterest, but you’re getting bookmarked right onto my web browser now. I also tried your brownie recipe and oh man! This is going to be my go to website for recipes.

Huge win y’all!! I made this for my family tonight, my first EVER Indian dish, (eating or cooking), and it was so good!!! Granted, it certainly took me longer than an hour, but it was well worth it! I also made the “naan” and oh my goodness, a game changer. My husband has stars in his eyes for all the things we’re going to use those tortillas for. Impressed!! Thank you for sharing this!!!

Yup, freeze minus the cauliflower rice. Slow cooking isn’t my specialty, but keep in mind that what builds the flavors a lot here is the method of cooking layer by layer. So while I’m sure you’ll still get a good butter chicken in the slow cooker you won’t get the depth from doing it on the stove top. hope this helps!

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